Verizon BlackBerry Bold 9650 Review

Coming off my 8330 I was more than excited to pick up a Tour 9630 the day it was released. I was one of a dozen or so people in line at my local Verizon store, and was in and out in a few minutes. I rushed home to get up and running on my new device. I fell in love with the higher resoution screen, keyboard and all around design. Thankfully I didn't have the trackball issues like some, but my battery door did come loose at times. I was happy to finally have the latest device on Verion's network (not such a big fan of AT&T or T-Mobile here in New Jersey).

Enter the Bold 9700. The feel of the device combined with the trackpad and overall "smoothness" just left me thinking "where is my CDMA version"? Rumors started flying, and sure enough talk of the Tour 2 popped up. Wifi and a trackpad on my Tour? Yes please. As with everyone else I was asking why Verizon didn't do it right the first time with the release of the 9630, but hindsight is 20/20. Months down the road, doubled memory, a trackpad, Wifi and a bit of rebranding leaves us with the newly released Bold 9650. Read on for my review.

Straight up out of the box you just think "Tour". The trackpad is the obvious difference, and aside from the Bold branding on the back it's the same device ... on the outside. On the inside we have juiced up memory to 512MB (in preparations for BlackBerry 6) and the addition of Wifi. The Bold 9650 feels great all around. Its a bit bigger than the Bold 9700 I've been using for the past few months, but nothing I won't be able to get used to. Holding the device is a bit different as it takes up more "hand space", but again I'll get over it. I love the 9650 keyboard (as I did the Tour) and mostly that I can get back on Verizon since the service is sooooo much better than that of T-Mobile where I live. Having the Wifi on a CDMA device is kind of a first for me since I never used a Storm2 and only rocked out the 8530 for a week or so. I was never a big believer in it in the past, but after having the Bold 9700 I really can't see myself without it. The back of the device has the large battery door, and thanfully it isn't loose and wobbly like my old Tour 9630. The site buttons and convenience keys are in the same place, with the exception of the micro USB port having dropped down a bit for some unknown reason. The placement of the port still is a mystery to me since it gets in the way if you try to type with the device plugged in.

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BlackBerry Bold 9650 (Verizon Wireless)

Verizon now offers several excellent Android smartphones, but enterprise customers may want a level of security and global roaming they can't get from the carrier's Android lineup. The BlackBerry Bold 9650 delivers. Like its brother on Sprint's network, the Bold 9650 on Verizon isn't exciting. But even if it feels like last year's smartphone, all of the Bold 9650's parts work with precision, and it's a pleasure to use for business.

Design and Call Quality
The Bold 9650 measures 4.4 by 2.4 by 0.6 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.8 ounces. It's made of a pleasing combination of matte and glossy plastics. The small 2.4-inch screen sports 480-by-360-pixel resolution, but still displays just 65K colors. The QWERTY keyboard is one of the best on the market. It features perfectly sculpted keys, a sensible arrangement, and just the right amount of resistance while typing. The sensitive trackpad was easy to use in testing. It should last for the life of the device, unlike the trouble-prone trackball of years past.

The Bold 9650 is a dual-band EV-DO Rev A (850/1900 MHz), quad-band EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), and single-band HSDPA (2100 MHz) device. That makes it a true world phone that hits high-speed data networks both here and overseas, including Europe and China. This is a big deal for globe-trotting executives. The 9650 connects calls over CDMA in the U.S., and on foreign GSM networks. The phone also includes 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, as well as the same 528MHz processor found in last year's Tour 9630.

Call quality was excellent overall, with a warm, full tone in the earpiece. Reception was solid, and transmissions were clear in both directions. Calls also sounded fine through an Aliph Jawbone Icon ($99, ) Bluetooth headset, and voice dialing worked fine over Bluetooth without training. The speakerphone was loud and powerful. Battery life was solid at 6 hours and 41 minutes of talk time.

Messaging and Apps
There's nothing tremendously new about BlackBerry OS 5. In fact, the screen, icon arrangement, and bundled apps recall the original BlackBerry Bold 9000 from two years ago. RIM has promised a BlackBerry 6 upgrade for the Bold which would add many new features, but they haven't committed to a firm date, and we don't like recommending products based on vaporware.

The Bold delivers push e-mail for up to 11 accounts, including from Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes. You can't sync Exchange contacts or calendar without a BlackBerry Enterprise Server setup, though. Verizon throws in IM clients for Google Talk, AIM, MSN, and Yahoo, and there's always BlackBerry Messenger.

Like all recent BlackBerrys, the Bold 9650 can view and edit Microsoft Office documents with its included DataViz Documents To Go suite. The included Web browser was still slow and error prone, though it's not as bad as before. We prefer the alternative Opera Mini and BOLT browsers. For GPS, VZ Navigator delivers voice-enabled, turn-by-turn directions for $9.99 per month. BlackBerry Maps and Google Maps both do the same thing without voice prompts for free. Verizon V CAST with Rhapsody offers streaming video and music options.

Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions
BlackBerrys are pretty solid media devices, and the Bold 9650 is no exception. The microSD card slot underneath the battery cover works with 32GB cards; my 16GB SanDisk card worked fine. The battery cover is easy to remove, and the slot is the newer, spring-loaded kind that should hold up over the long haul. Music tracks sounded punchy and clear over Motorola S9-HD ($149.99, ) Bluetooth headphones. The player was easy to use and displayed large album art graphics. The new BlackBerry Desktop 6 works with PCs and Macs, and does a surprisingly good job of syncing your media, including iTunes playlists. Verizon's Rhapsody software syncs subscription music with PCs, for Rhapsody subscribers. Standalone videos looked sharp, bright, and colorful, though the small screen may put some viewers off.

The 3.2-megapixel auto-focus camera includes an LED flash. Test photos were sharp, with natural lighting and color balance. One quirk: in one particularly bright room, all test photos came out tinted pink. Outdoor pictures looked sharp, and the LED flash was one of the brightest I've tested. Recorded 480-by-352-pixel videos looked dim but smooth at 24 frames per second; fortunately, you can kick the LED flash on as a light for video recording if necessary.

All told, the BlackBerry Bold 9650 is a solid value, even if it's not groundbreaking in any way. It's the perennial safe smartphone purchase for business travelers, especially when combined with Verizon's solid voice and data network. Owners of existing BlackBerry Curve phones will want to jump up for the much better screen, but owners of Tour 9630 phones can hold off on upgrading until their trackballs break or until they see BlackBerry OS 6 appear here.

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Hands On Review of the Sprint BlackBerry Bold 9650

The launch of the new BlackBerry Bold 9650 has been highly anticipated among the CDMA users on CrackBerry. The day has finally come where the masses can now add this new BlackBerry to their mobile communications arsenal.

The Bold 9650 was announced at WES 2010 to be launching on Sprint starting on May 23rd. However we have known about the existence of this device for quite some time. Just a few days ago, Sprint upped the ante with its users and launched the device one week early via online sales. Many happy CrackBerry readers were able to order their new device and will have it in their hands before it actually hits the stores. The question that lingers in my mind is why did Sprint move up the launch date? Are they worried about sales of the Bold 9650 with the impending release of the HTC EVO? I guess only time will tell, but from my viewpoint, this is one awesome BlackBerry.

Keep on reading to get my full thoughts.

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BlackBerry Bold 9650 “Essex”

Shortly following the launch of the BlackBerry Tour, after the complaints of a buggy trackball and lack of Wi-Fi had gushed over the blogs and forums, Sprint confirmed that there would be an updated version of the Tour that would have Wi-Fi. As it turned out, the optical trackpad that was introduced around the same time in the BlackBerry Curve 8530 would also be included in the refresh. The trackball was notoriously unreliable on the Tour, and no doubt those who had wrestled with it were eager to find an alternative.

A little under a year later, Sprint’s promise came to fruition. RIM announced the Pearl 9100 and Bold 9650 at the Wireless Enterprise Symposium this April, finally offering a CDMA BlackBerry that could properly compete with the latest Bold available on GSM carriers, currently the 9700. The most notable addition that gave the 9650 an edge over the 9700 was doubled application memory (256 MB to 512 MB). Was there a lot riding on such a cold, hard statistic, were there any more substantial difference between the two, or are they really more or less the same, just built for different wireless standards? The BlackBerry Bold 9650 is out on Sprint and Verizon, so discriminating buyers may want some answers.

Hit the jump to find them.


Pros

    * Responsive and reliable trackpad
    * Mammoth application memory
    * Excellent display, as always

Cons

    * Long-overdue
    * Single sound port produces uneven sound
    * Little consumer appeal

Hardware

The casing is identical to the Tour 9630, aside from the replacement of the trackball with a trackpad, so not much new there. Size-wise, that’s just a big bigger than the 9700. There’s the same Bold-style keyboard with fretted spaces between each row, single sound port on the left side, and a unified mute/lock key on the top. Let’s take a looksee at the specs.

    * 112 mm x 62 mm x 14 mm, 136 g
    * 2.4″ 480 x 360 (HVGA) display
    * 512 MB of RAM, 528 MHz processor
    * 1400mAhr battery – 13 days standby, 5 hours talk
    * GPS, Wi-Fi b/g, Bluetooth 2.1
    * Quad-band EDGE, single-band HSPA, dual-band EV-DO Rev. A
    * 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus, LED flash, 2 x digital zoom

Maybe it’s just my imagination, but I found the trackpad on the Bold 9650 exceptionally responsive and smooth, even versus other trackpad-toting BlackBerrys. It worked just fine in direct sunlight, which is usually a big problem for those kind of sensors. I still find the top-mounted lock/mute keys a little too easy to accidentally press, but at this point, RIM seems dedicated to consistently keeping them there.

Overall, the build quality is stable. The battery door is in the same style as the old Tour (including the latch mechanism), but they swapped out the glossy texture for a matte plastic matching the main body, and a new ridged texture for the center. Scratch at it, and in no time you can be the office’s resident irritating DJ.

Software

The BlackBerry Bold 9650 runs OS 5.0, which includes a variety of new features, like e-mail flags, distribution list sync, and a mix of aesthetic and practical updates. By default, the UI is a pretty standard grid, which you navigate with the trackpad, and access functions through the menu key (to the left) and the back key (to the right). There are plenty of themes out there to change the layout, colour scheme, fonts, and generally offer a more colourful ride.

BlackBerry remains an efficient, if sometimes stark experience. Third-party application selection in the App World feels a little limited compared to Android sometimes, and iPhone often, but Google has managed to get most of their major products on BlackBerry, which usually rank high on usefulness and polish. GPS is always helpful, and RIM has their own BlackBerry Maps app which is easy on the bandwidth, but light on the features – get Google Maps for Mobile instead. Official RIM apps for social networking and instant messaging tend to be well done, and integrate with the native messages and address book apps.

Now, the big selling point with the Bold 9650 is the 512 MB of app memory. It’s the first BlackBerry to dial up memory that high, and it is an absolute godsend. My daily driver is the Bold 9000, which is stuck with 128 MB of app memory – an amount you have to judiciously monitor or suffer regular waits while the OS scrambles to make room after downloading everyday files like web pages, e-mails, and the like. In that way, app memory is about more than simply how much software you can cram onto your smartphone, but also how much wriggle room it has to function. I’m happy to say that with the Bold 9650, I was able to load up all of the apps I needed, even the ones that I had tearfully cast aside on my 9000 in order to simply function, and still have room leftover for the BlackBerry to do its thing. I haven’t spent much more than a week with devices that had 256 MB, but they mostly made memory a non-issue; at the 512 MB mark, the situation is altogether luxurious. Most future BlackBerrys, including the next GSM Bold and the upcoming 9800 slider will be meeting this standard, though lower-end BlackBerrys, like the Curve 9300 “Kepler” will sit at 256 MB for the time being.

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